Into the Fediverse

For those who already know about the Fediverse, I can be followed at @index@heathenstorm.com (preferred), or @heathenstorm@heathenstorm.com if your favoured platform can’t handle groups yet.

As for those who don’t (likely most reading this), an explanation:

The Fediverse is a decentralised, federated network of independent social platforms that communicate using the ActivityPub protocol. Each individual instance runs according to its own community rules, hosting anything from a single user to millions.

Different Fediverse platforms have sprung up to mirror the user experience and expectations of existing SocMed sites. Mastodon is analogous to X/BlueSky, Pixelfed to Instagram, PeerTube to YouTube, and so on. These are not single websites. Anyone can grab the code and spin up their own instance, depending on the type of content they want to host.

In addition, the larger companies are experimenting with federation. Meta’s Threads can technically hook up to other instances, as long as both sides opt-in. Bridging services are also available to aid connection elsewhere. These are still very much in testing but show wider adoption.

Similar to email, users on one instance can connect to users on any other, their address being a combination of user and site name. Sending and receiving structured ActivityStream data through their instance, representing actions upon objects. Be that notification of a new post, a comment made in return, or any number of rich social interactions.

Instances federate their content to others, so all the content from one instance can be seen elsewhere. This allows smaller instances to automatically send and receive updates from the rest of the world, spreading the load from their own server. Instances may also ‘defederate’ from others for whatever reason, breaking the connection.

Photos shared on a PixelFed instance, for example, can be viewed local to that instance, on other PixelFed instances, on Mastodon, and beyond. When viewers post replies on their own instance, they appear under the original. A platform-agnostic conversation across multiple sites.

Vitally, no individual user is globally silenced, although their expression is influenced by the focus of their local community. If they feel this too restrictive, they have the freedom to migrate their profile and connections to another instance more compatible with their needs.

Or create their own.

In the case of the HeathenStorm website, content is federated via the ActivityPub WordPress plugin. This does all the complicated stuff behind the scenes, creating the necessary plumbing to connect my site to the Fediverse. I’ve been testing it for over a year now, (including a few little tweaks for caching), and it does the job very well.

This plugin is available to any WordPress blog, and those that are hosted on the wordpress.com site can enable this in their Discussion Settings.

Once enabled, a Fediverse profile is set up for the site, and posts become available to anyone who follows it from their own instance. Initially, most new followers may just see a blank profile, but as posts are made this soon fills up.

From this I can enable interaction with the site without expecting direct visitors. My posts will appear as appropriate for the platform they are viewed on, and replies can be brought back into the (otherwise unused) comments section here at my discretion. I can choose who I want to interact with on my terms, and either respond in comments or with posts of my own. Any updates I make to existing posts are also federated, ensuring everything is up to date.

Crucially, this places the site in an ever-expanding network of possibility. As more new platforms and legacy SocMed services embrace federation, my audience grows. Coupled with POSSE for syndication, I feel this a solid base that covers all concerns while allowing for expansion.

In all honesty, the Fediverse isn’t quite ready for the non-nerd public, requiring a tad more technical nous than most to get on board. The notion of multiple instances that interact as one can be confusing, but it’s the possibility that intrigues me.

I feel that the ActivityStreams spec is just the beginning, with a rich vocabulary already in place to cover all kinds of interactions and content types. Although current implementations try to clone existing SocMed a tad too closely, they each solve different problems. PeerTube especially handles such notions as media transcoding and peer-to-peer delivery of video content.

But these are all separate platforms, and it would be beneficial if these solutions were modularised. Allowing an individual or community to customise a user experience based on their unique priorities. With plugins to enable image galleries, music libraries, standard video, short-form reels, tweet-like-content, long posts, forums, event calendars and the like. Each module adding functionality to the core server, but all speaking the same ActivityPub protocol under the hood.

This would empower creatives to take control back from SocMed. Building bespoke platforms to serve the needs of their content instead of constricting and censoring their work to fit in between everyone else’s.

Regardless how these individual solutions present themselves, they would each connect seamlessly across the Fediverse. Sharing content to other sites with different priorities, but enabling interaction, communication, and collaboration between all. Creating an ad-hoc network of small-scale, focused communities, accountable to themselves.

That’s the long-term plan at least. WordPress has come a long way towards enabling this, so the plugin architecture there would be a good start, perhaps when combined with custom Post Types. But the vision stretches far beyond blogging.

I will add more to the Manifesto as I go. Sharing experiences and solutions as they emerge, as well as elaborating more on the deeper ideas presented in these last few posts.

For now, it’ll be nice to crack on with those creative endeavours again.

https://heathenstorm.com/2025/04/26/into-the-fediverse/

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#activitypub #federation #fediverse #freedom #peertube #pixelfed #socialmedia #website #wordpress